I thought the game was strongest with the first major WSE release. The game was so fresh and new that we somehow forgave the terrible mechanics. Remember overheads through teammates? Terrible. When they managed to remove it, it showed me that they really do have the best of the community in mind.
Its hard to please everybody. Here I am the wednesday morning after christmas, lobbying for a weaponmaster buff to a game I haven't played in weeks. I played with a 1 hand sword the other day after not playing for weeks - the overhead swing felt fine to me all the sudden. I remember day 1 of the spin nerf, I was actually cheering, because it made sense in my head. I pulled out the bill and went 15-1 the very first map I played. Some fog cleared in my rage-filled head that was like... hey this isn't so bad. Then I got shot with an arbalest. Then I quit, haha. Its just funny to me because I actually want the arbalest to get buffed too.
Though everyone is going to have different opinions on past versions of the mod vs. the current version, you bring up the single most important point that I absolutely have to agree with. Some new life needs to be pumped in to it - not through balance changes - not through buffs or nerfs, but something that makes us say "I want to play cRPG tonight". Something that creates a memorable time. Absolutely not a revert to the old days, but something that creates a great deal of freedom.
I played xmasrpg last year. God, it was awful. Things were indeed much much worse than they were today. Ladders were terrible always, which is my major complaint about the way strategus sieges are now too. But I do admit, I played 10 times the amount of siege back then, and had the time of my life, not really worrying about multis even though they existed. I liked the old armor soak values and hunting goretooth. Glancing off armor sucked, but you shouldn't be able to left swing black plate with a scottish sword effortlessly, and I felt my high pierce weapon had its place. Heavy armor is still effective though, with healthy amounts of STR and ironflesh. Many mechanics did just feel that much more intuitive - even goring my teammates' faces with the backswing on the english bill, and constantly getting hung up on walls with it on my first gen really added immersion in the most backwards way. As disgusting as my playstyle was pre-spin-nerf, not everyone used the swiss halberd or english bill - but they existed, and they were respected (by most haha).
100% support for conquest mode. Strategus should be played by the community as a whole too, instead of stepping on toes and S'ing people's D's. The game is in a good spot, we just need to move forward and breathe some life into it.
